CIVS Students Receive Graduate Research Grant Award

Congratulations to Saswot Thapa and Emily Higley, two CIVS graduate students who were selected as recipients of the Graduate Research Grant Award for the 2021-2022 academic year at Purdue University Northwest!

Emily’s project is titled Oxygen-enriched Combustion in a Reheat Furnace, which objective is to determine the optimal oxygen port and burner configuration for oxygen enrichment in the bottom intermediate zone of a walking-beam reheat furnace to improve the fuel efficiency and reduce the cost of furnace operations and NOx pollution.

Saswot’s project is titled Development and Application of Solidification Model for Continuous Casting (CC) of Steel with the goal of utilizing three-dimensional numerical models to simulate solidification of the molten steel into solid. Ultimately designing a dynamic solidification prediction simulator based on the flow formation, temperature distribution, and shell thickness to provide manufactures a comprehensive database to improve steel quality. Both of them will present their research work at PNW Days of Discovery, next spring (April 2022).

Emily Higley is a CIVS graduate research assistant that enrolled in the 4+1 program for Mechanical Engineering. This is the first semester of her Master Degree. During her senior year, she studied the flow and reactions inside the bottom intermediate zone of a reheating furnace during oxygen-enrichment with an air-fired case is simulated and used as a baseline for comparing 7 oxygen-enrichment cases. She will continue to conduct research as a member of the Reheating Furnace project, investigating hydrogen combustion as she pursues her Master’s Degree.

Saswot Thapa is a CIVS graduate research assistant major who received his Bachelor’s Degree here at PNW and is pursuing his Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering with hopes of getting his Ph.D. one day. At CIVS, he’s working on modeling the CC of steel to design a best practice database for manufacturers based on real-world casting conditions and steel compositions to improve the steel quality as well as reduce refinement production cost..

PNW Graduate Research Awards support graduate students and fund their research, which will be disbursed to the recipients at the beginning of the fall of the academic year of the award. The grant are eligible for the students’ thesis research, or non‐thesis program research projects with an expected result, such as a thesis, directed project research‐based report, or a publishable academic paper. Recipients must present their work at student research day in the spring of the award year, either by oral presentation or by poster session.